Kannonbal in the house

otb designworks

Thanks Coen for the new home!

It kind of feels good to be one of the leading pack of the exodus, though I wish it wasn't necessary.

I will miss the back door to tech support, through the forums, but I think that was going to be greatly minimized by the new forum location anyway.

Good luck, Coen, in trying to get the original forum history transfered; that would be unbelievable awesome.

Cheers, Chuck

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,
KKKKAANNNNNOOOONNNNNBAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
I know I promised not to do that again, but the elation I feel is increased by the hard news today and the screwing that we got... I am just so exited to see some of my friends here...I hope that this is not burdonsome for Coen, and it would be nice if he was able to host us all and have space for attachments etc..

Hopefully he can make some money at this so that it could continue.

otb designworks

HAHAHAHHA, Shaun, you crack me up

If this forum ends up being a core users group, then google's move may turn out to be the best thing to have happened. How do I make a sphere questions do tend to get a bit old. The one thing I know I will miss is knowing that tech support pays attention to the forums, perhaps more so than some support emails (judging from my past experiences)

And really, the forum 'migration' worries me less than the fact that I still can't export an animation in SU6 without horrible flickering artifacts that do not appear if I export out of version 5. Now that is unbelievable for a release that occurred 5 months ago and has had two maintenance releases, too (and the latest specifically said they had fixed the animation issue on the Macs.

Anyhoo, it's great to be here!

Cheers, chuck

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,
I'm freakin' laughing right now because I could almost use a tut EVERYTIME I make a sphere! - but seriously - i was thinking something along those lines too, I think the old forum had 30,000 people on there? now obviously many did not contribute, but if we have 300 or so mighty men of Sketchup here and can gather.. well, i would definitely dig that...and judging by the current roll call - it looks good... really good - now as long as we all stick around..and post we will have something special I think..
Thanks for being around - and can I have your IM so I could call you when i need to make a sphere?
(ooh - i love the avatars too - just nice to know what everyone looks like!)

CraigD

Yo Kannonbal - I can't promise that Tech Support will be here, but I will!

Now, let's see if we can figure out what's wrong with your animation...

...maybe that'll have to wait till Monday!

Cheers,

 - CraigD

otb designworks

Craig, I knew there was something I liked about you! Is that a R 6 you are riding there? I ride a '95 1100 GS and love it! Do you race or just play? Have you ever checked out http://www.advriders.com? By far and away my second favorite forum after SketchUp. I am Kannonbal over there, too, FWIW.

It is great to see you here; my at ease level has just ratcheted up significantly.

Hi Coen, I have a silly little request. Is there any way to see which posts that I have read have been replied to? On another forum I spend time on, when you look at the thread lists, the ones which have been added to since the last time I looked are highlighted. Or is that how 'view active threads' works. Thanks for all your hard work here and I am looking forward to the future.

Shaun, whenever I need a sphere, I have to troll the forums looking for someone's attachments. Thank goodness for 3D Warehouse LOL . You can call me any time brother man, though I probably won't be much help. Any idea how to animate a door opening..................

New forum YAY!

otb designworks

Nothing like talking before reading.

I just saw the 'new posts' button, too. Thanks Coen, I am not too smart sometimes, but you all will come to see that in no time

CraigD

Hey Chuck! That shot was on my Mighty R1!!! My wife and I really have a thing for bikes...I've been on em my whole life...and together we own 7!!! I am an amateur road racer (although I've beaten many experts!) and I campaign a 98 Honda RS125R GP bike. My road bikes are 05 Suzuki DRZ400SM (crashed it last week in the canyons west of Boulder!! DOH!), an 03 CBR954RR, and a heavily modified 88 Honda Hawk GT. My wife has an 88 FZR400 track bike, an 89 Honda Hawk GT (slightly modified, but beautiful!), and an 01 CBR929RR!

We like the bikes, and I like the competition. I've got a bunch of trophies and X-Rays to show for it too!

Cheers, and ride well!!!

 - CraigD

otb designworks

NICE! I sold a KTM 250 EXC to enable my acquisition of the GS. I have a one bike limit imposed on me by my lovely wife, but I sure have my eye on a nice 450 EXC. I always thought that I would really dig vintage racing, perhaps campaigning an old /5 or /6. One day in my free time.

I bet that R1 is fecking awesome! Sorry to here that you put the Suzuki down 8O ; I trust you were alright? Up here, it is the gazillion deer that really make me nervous. That is great that you get to share biking with your girl; mine just does not enjoy motorcycling, though she raced mountain bikes on an ameture level for years. Oh well.

It would be fun to go for a ride sometime!

CraigD

Hey Chuck! I came pretty close to buying a KTM Super Motard, but didn't have the funds...but with the fixes to the DRZ (and my wife said she thinks I crash on purpose so that I have to upgrade a bunch of stuff! ...she knows me pretty well... , but the DRZ will probably cost about the same when I'm done! I really like to modify my bikes...I admire the positive characteristics and then improve the areas that let the whole package down...kinda like Software QA testing! That EXC is a SWEET ride! If you get that, I want to see pictures! Brembo brakes, fat bars, White Bros fully adjustable suspension and stainless exhaust! Nice!

The Mighty R1 sure was a great bike! With me at 132 lbs, it sure didn't even know that I was on the back! I used to spin the rear tire in the turns to "finish" the corner! I got pretty good at sliding the rear end on that thing! Massive power, and brutal delivery! Be smoooooooooth!

I like my CBR954RR a lot now. It's got a kinder power delivery, and very precise/sharp handling characteristics! It's still back in Massachusetts with all our other bikes (except the DRZ400SM) at the moment. Deb and I are looking for a place to rent or buy that has enough space for the toys! I'll post pictures when I get some spare time! I've done the whole suspension to fit my needs: Race Tech front springs and gold valve damping controls, hard anodized fork tubes and slick bushings up front. For the rear I had Traxxion Dynamics build me a Penske triple adjustable shock with matching spring rates and Torrington ring bearings on the spring perch so it doesn't bind in heavy load corners! It's a sweet ride!

Anyway, if you get down here with a bike, I'd be up for a ride for sure!

Cheers,

 - CraigD

P.S. Check out my movie! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8852178485418537975&pr=goog-sl

otb designworks

HAHAHA, sweet movie! Last time I had a camera pointed at me, my dirt bike ended up under my pickup

Those super motards sure look like a ton of fun. I had my EXC set up with a Scott's steering stabilizer, FMF pipe, it was bored over a touch, and that bike was awesome. In the super technical rides around Crested Butte, though, I found myself wanting a four stroke because I didn't necessarily have the 'stones' to stay on the pipe enough to keep from stalling. I am dreaming about getting a new bike, though, I don't ride the one I have enough. You need to take the dirt bike out to Delta sometimes. That place is like the ultimate playground! Tight technical rocky lines, wide open sand, steep spines, drainages, you name it. And it is pretty much ridable all year, more or less.

My bike needs shocks in a bad way. I have a certain fondness for running hard into turns in fourth, pop two gears, hard on the front break before entry and let second gear squirm the back tire into the lean. To say that I notice that my back shock is shot is an understatement. The mack daddy front and rear setup is like $1600 though!!! Might be a while........The CBR sure sounds like a sweet ride. I really have very little seat time in sport bikes, but the GS will rally the whee out of the twisties; it just tops out at about 128, which I guess is just as well.

I'll see if I can dig up a picture or two.....

Cheers, mayng, good luck on the animation troubleshooting.

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,
I just had a look over your website again man. I really liked your straight SU output stuff, and some of your exteriors are fantastic! A little piece of critiscism though, I didn't really like most of the renders, I think that the materials need to be explored a little more with highlights, reflections, bump and diffusion/absorbing qualities. I did like the overhead kitchen view though and will likely rip you off on that!!! (if that is okay) something about a perspective like that that just seemed exiting. That is something I noticed right away looking at your stuff this time, was your eye for perspective. PS filters after are a great way to bring even a not-so nice render up to snuff... One of my fav's right now is OpticVerve Labs Virtual Photographer...I'll post a link tonight after I play with your render on that other post!

The photomontages also were AWESOME... I haven't tried anything like that yet.. so I guess I should get on 'er I didn't check out your animations, but I'm sure that they are pretty cool.. all in all a really cool site and it gives me some motivation to get mine going...

again - I'm glad that you are here and we can all keep in touch and in community - I was also glad to see your KAAAANNNNNOONNNBALLLL! in the pool - you soaked me!

otb designworks

Hey Shaun, thanks for the kind words! I really appreciate you taking the time to post your reactions and thoughts about my images. I couldn't agree with you more about my renderings; I am still way coming to grips with learning Cheetah and the whole materials setup thing. I guess Martin, Cheetah's developer, is completely reworking the materials part of the software, as well as greatly enhancing the quality of various soft shadow producing lights. This is very exciting, though some guys are really generating awesome renders now. It seems that there is agreement that interiors are pretty difficult to set up correctly, so I am am excited about having a lot to learn.

I am glad you are liking the photo montage work! I have been doing a lot of experimenting with QTVR (thanks wehby for cubic pano out!!) and I have been playing around with stitching models into existing photos and then turning them into virtual tours. It is pretty cool when it all works right, though it takes a bunch of time in photoshop. Clients really like them, and I like that QTVR makes way smaller files than animations, which is great for web use. I am interested in hearing what you think about them.

I would love to check out OpticVerve; I'd like to see how your experiments work out with one of my images (thanks for taking the time, too). It sounds like a really interesting plugin and could help me out a bunch. Speaking of photoshop, have you upgraded to CS3 yet? I am holding out until the Premium Production suite is out but Photoshop Extended looks awesome.

I am off to the pool to see if there is any 'talent' around, hehehehehhe (lecherous old man cackle)

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,
I didn't get time to play with your images last night - video conversion got the best of me.. I finally got my animation married with sound, converted and then uploaded to youtube last night though - glad that's done! I just checked out OpticVerve - and shoot wouldn't you know it - only for PC... sorry bud. I might have a quick peek tonight, but we'll see. As far as Photoshop.. well I'm still using Photoshop elements actually - I got it with my (now ancient) Nikon Coolpix 5000 when I bought it, and I've never had the priority to pick up CS3. The only time it crossed my mind is with "the worncall" technique - Marc Day if I'm not mistaken. That is a cool rendering technique, and I can't do every step in PS elements, but I didn't break down.. I have other stuff on the burner! (like trying to amass computers for my renderfarm!). Talent.. good on ya... I saw Ross scopin a couple babes the other day at the outdoor bean shaped pool.

otb designworks

figures, PC only......... Oh well, I'd still like to see what sort of results are possible with it, if you happen to have the time and motivation.

Congrats on getting your video up and running! Video conversions and all can be a pain. What video editing software do you use? I am currently trying to decide if I want to go the Adobe Premier route or the Final Cut Pro route. I am tending towards Adobe just because I can get an upgrade price for the Production premium suite.

Yeah, I downloaded the Worncall technique off of Pushpullbar; there really is a ton of good stuff in there. I guess the new Photoshop CS3 will allow you to open, manipulate, and even measure (!?!) fbx and obj files. It sounds like photomatching with steroids and I am definitely going to check it out. I have been running PS7 on my Intel Mac and it runs like a dog; some of my 1.5 gig, 67 picture panos can pretty much bring it to a halt.

Are really putting a render farm together? That is sick! Will you take jobs from others or is this going to be just inhouse? I just finished a 35 hour Sketchup animation export, and some Cheetah rendered animations can go multi day, which I have not attempted yet.

Late,

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,

Yep. I've got a farm homey! - I would probably do renders for people, but I only run VUE5i and SU. Here is a pic. My farm isn't too hot yet - but here's what I have:
My machine Opteron 170 dual core - a beast
My wife's old computer - Celeron 2800 - a real pig
Beside that a P3 550 that I "won" at work (too old to sell)
The stack of machines are Dell's and IBM's The IBM's are 1Ghz and the Dells are 1.6Ghz and 1 is a 1.59Ghz But I'm always on the lookout.
The Laptop is a 1.66 Ghz Dual Core HP Pavillion.
The results with all this beastly equipment? A render that would take my machine 30 hours, now takes 12. These aren't wonderful machines by any sense, but I'm impressed that I was able to link them all, run virtual desktops so I didn't have to have a tonne of monitors and it all works pretty decent.

Looking forward to hearing what you think of this!
Grasp Renderfarm.jpg

otb designworks

Shaun, you are an animal!! That all sure makes my one laptop seem, ah, a little, ah, shall we say, small.

So, you link them all together with usb 2? Or, do you take a SU animation, break it into a bunch of pieces and load each piece into a separate computer and then stitch them all back together again? I was just telling my wife that it is going to be rendering that forces me to get another computer, so I can work and render at the same time. I am not a patient man and 12-30 hour renders are driving me nuts. I guess I could dump some of it on her computer and.........well, that would just get me in trouble.

I can hardly wait to see your website; you got to get on that! I have looked at Vue before, but after seeing some of what you are doing, I may have to take another look. Does it run on Macs?

Shaun Tennant

Chuck,

is the diminutive size of your laptop making you feel less "manly"? Keep in mind that these are slow, plodding beasts. It's not the size of your machine, it's the speed (or what you do with it) - uh, okay enough...

I haven't tried an animation from SU yet, I think that would require another license for each machine - unless someone came up with some way to use the comps as a cluster or something.. but SU wouldn't support that - (multi core).

I just realised that I suggested someone should have 2 SU's open on 1 computer today to utilise both cores for rendering (splitting up the animation pages between each instance) but I hope that I didn't counsel an illegal behaviour - I often open a couple instances to copy/paste.

I have this set up for VUE, the animations take for fricking ever. I have them set up on a simple network, nothing installed on the dells and ibms except the VUE render cow (node) and then they are controlled by a "head" computer that has VNC viewer, the rest are VNC servers so that you don't have to have a keyboard, mouse and monitor for each. I can then pick which ones I want to use for rendering and I can have my computer free for more work if I want!

Why don't you come over and check it out?

otb designworks

Hey, thanks for the invite! I'd love to ride the bike up there one of the weekends. Maybe make the big loop through Banff and Golden. I have never been further north than Calgary and I am dying to get up there.

Have you skied Kicking Horse? I hear it is awesome, though sometimes hurting for snow.

I didn't even think that you would need multiple licenses for SU; that is a drag. I am pretty intimidated by rendering times for ray trace stuff and I have yet to jump off the edge and start one. I don't know if you've been following the threads over in the dead forums, but SU6 animation export is still fubared. CraigD has been busting his nut trying to help me out, but it seems to be quite the problem. So I am having to model in 6, save out to 5, and then export from 5. Talk about twiddling your thumbs while 200MB SU files open and close, and of course orbiting and panning is brutal, too, especially in version 5. Can you guess that I am setting up an animation export right now . At least it isn't 12:30. And I often have both version 5 and 6 open at the same time. If I could actually get decent exports out of 6, then perhaps doing two exports at once would speed things up, though why do I have the sneaking suspicion that they would just each render at 1/2 speed.

And what are you doing up right now?

not registered yet

Hello Kannonbal,

I just checked out your site and am very impressed by your QTVR work. I'm trying to start doing this and I'm wondering if you could share some info on how you created the hotspots within the files. Also, how did you add a map button that allowed for quick jumping from hotspot to hotspot. That was too cool!

Is there some software that I should pick up that creates these easily? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

Dan

poster-gustone81